recipes

What did future Smithsonian benefactor James Smithson have at the ready? The receipts (or recipes, as it turns out). Acquired by the Smithsonian in 1914, Smithson's "Receipt Book" contains recipes for everything from incense and ink dyes, to cordials and mulgatawny [sic], to tooth powder and bug poison. This nineteenth-century resource will lift your spirits, calm your ague, and polish your furniture. Hopefully, the ingredients are still available. 

This grouping of mimeographed recipes by Ruth Sheldon the Director of the Home Services Department of the Washington Gas Light Company are likely the earliest edition(s) of recipe collections that would later be published in book form by the Company. The kitchen-tested and nutritious recipes were a promotional courtesy to new customers of modern gas light ranges. Sheldon's Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics and teaching backgroud parlayed nicely into a career during WWII in Washington, D.C.